Reveka writes home, and the letters written are the hardest ones she's ever written in her life.

Heartbreak, Lingering Post Partum Depression

When

-- On Pern --
It is 7:46 PM where you are.
It is sunset of the twenty-second day of the third month of the fourteenth turn of the 12th pass.
In Igen:
It is the twenty-second day of Spring and 68 degrees. Despite being clear, dry and sunny over the weyr proper, a thunderstorm drenches the outer reaches of Igen's desert.
In Southern:
It is the twenty-second day of Autumn and 76 degrees. Partly cloudy, the storm seems to be mostly gone with only the occasional short falls of rain painting the ground.
In Southern Mountains:
It is the twenty-second day of Autumn and 24 degrees. It's really damn cold out.

I just want to be okay, be okay, be okay
I just want to be okay today
I just want to be okay, be okay, be okay
I just want to be okay today
I just want to feel today, feel today, feel today
I just want to feel something today
I just want to feel today, feel today, feel today
I just want to feel something today
Open me up and you will see
I'm a gallery of broken hearts
I'm beyond repair, let me be
And give me back my broken parts
I just want to know today, know today, know today
I just want to know something today
I just want to know today, know today, know today
Know that maybe I will be okay
Open me up and you will see
I'm a gallery of broken hearts
I'm beyond repair, let me be
And give me back my broken parts
Just give me back my pieces
Just give them back to me please
Just give me back my pieces
And let me hold my broken parts
I just want to be okay, be okay, be okay
I just want to be okay today
I just want to be okay, be okay, be okay
I just want to be okay today
I just want to feel today, feel today, feel today
I just want to feel something today (I just want to feel something today)
I just want to know today, know today, know today
Know that maybe I will be okay (Know that maybe I will be okay)
Know that maybe I will be okay (Know that maybe I will be okay)
Know that maybe I will be okay

Reveka's Guest Quarters

Stone-cut walls bear the suspicious precision of ancient stonecutters; these rooms are some of the oldest in all of Southern, and though mystery clouds the epistemology of such, easy comfort garbs them. These quarters range in scope from large suites suited for such dignitaries as visiting Holders, to cozy double-bunk rooms homely enough for any stable hand: but all are dressed in the same old quilts and breezy sheets, and fresh golden-and-green glows.

Reveka has spread out since her temporary move here, here things strung about, not put away since she spends most of her time here anyways.

Dinner has been done for a time now, and after a few days of ruminating on the idea, Reveka’s decided it’s about time to write home. She lays sprawled out on her stomach in bed, chin resting on her hands as she stares at a set of writing utensils she’d tracked down and the small stack of fresh hides next to it.

Who does she write to first?
She lifts a hand, idly biting at, but not actually chewing her nails. This is something she needs to do, she knows it.

Then why does it fill her with so much dread?

Because she has to touch her past to do it, because writing means acknowledging that she has unfinished business to attend to, and rather unpleasant business at that. Because she doesn't want to burst the protective bubble she's put around herself just to keep from falling to pieces.

But she can't keep putting this off. Can't keep pretending that the world around doesn't exist anymore. She can't just pretend that everything that's happened didn't happen.

Truth is, she got herself into this whole mess. Well. She and En'rys. But, mostly, her current situation is all her own doing. She left. She came here. And now that the healing process has begun, she needs to take care of some things, even if they are unpleasant to think about.

So, sighing, she sits herself up and packs the writing utensils and hides into a rucksack. She'll never get this done if she stays here, likely she would just curl up to sleep and just put it off for another day. So, when that's done, she'll slip on something decent to wear, which is just making skirt and a thing strapped top, and slip into her sandals before heading out of the guest quarters and…..

Stopping into the hallway, Reveka looks around. Where should she go? Sighing, she picks a direction and heads that way. It takes her a little over a candlemark, but she ends up sitting at the Nighthearth, having found nowhere else suitable for the task at hand. She gets herself a cup of strong klah and folds herself into one of the overstuffed chairs. There’s long moments of just sitting and sipping her klah before she moves again.

Finally, with a determined sigh, she pulls out her things and sits poised to write. Her mind a race as she decides who to write to first. Silence fills the air for a moment, then, the scribbling of stylus across hide as finally the words begin to flow:

To Reva,
Are you happy I’m gone Mother? Happy the source of your shame is no longer in Igen?
Or will you be happier when I tell you I’m not coming back? That I quite find the Southern climate suits me? Which one of my sisters have you decided will take my place? Which one will you try to rise to glory for the sake of your own gain?
I suppose it doesn’t matter. According to you my sisters are no longer my concern. All because I dared fall in love, and all because you kept me ignorant of how proper herb usage works, and I had a child because of that forced ignorance. I’ll not deny I made mistakes, but so did you.
Daen…En’rys, is no cad. No scoundrel. He loves me. Despite all that has fallen upon us, and all that has ruined us, he loves me, and I love him. I have so many regrets, but none of them are being with him. I regret not saying yes to him when he asked me to marry him. I regret giving up my son. My Raeverys. No longer mine. Gone. All because you insisted that what I did was ever so shameful.
But most of all, I regret ever having listened to you. I could have made a good mother…I could have married or weyrmated En’rys. I could have had a family. But instead I let you get into my head like a snake burrows a den. Too young, you Said. He’s gone and left you like this and where is he now? You said. SHAME You said. And I, like a dumb whelp, listened to you.

By the time En’rys could be with me, it was too late. I’d lost my mind, quite literally, over the course of this. Even now I keep him at arms length because the thought of my disjointed little family being torn apart is literally too painful to think about. He thinks I'm running away. I can't hear the thought of being with him because it's too painful. And it's all your fault mother. All of it. If you'd just left us alone… if only you'd been supportive. Willimina had been ready to help me through things, but you put a stop to that too.
It's pretty sad mother, that our caravan leader, and one of our resident healers are more mothers to me than you have been. You think you've denounced me, and that's fine, because this will be the last letter you ever receive from me, it will be the last contact. As you think you have no daughter named Reveka, I in turn acknowledge no mother.
You are not my mother Reva, simply the woman I had the unfortunate luck of having give birth to me…

Reveka pauses, rage seeping through her like a soothing balm for the pain and longing she's endured the last few turns. But this next part is hard to write, hard to put to hide because once said it could never be unsaid.

I also recognize none of the rest of you. I have no sisters, no brother, no father. All of you are as dead to me as the banished are to Willimina. I am Zingari, but I am not yours, I am not father's and I am not your problem anymore.
I hope you treat your next daughter/victim with more respect and patience than you ever showed me. Though I highly doubt this will be the case.
With no love lost at all,
Reveka.

Shaking, Reveka sets down the stylus to move the hide so that it might dry. She takes long sips of her klah, trying to calm her nerves for the next letter, because it will be the hardest letter to write, and she doesn't know if she's ready to do this, even though she must, the mindhealer had insisted on it.

It's time to make contact. Even though Reveka would rather hide. A refill in klah is ne. eded and acquired before she puts stylus to hide again, her hands shaking briefly with the anxiety that comes with it.

My Dearest Daenerys,

Firstly, I am so sorry that I have kept you at arm's length for so long. It's been… a rough path to healing, which I think, in ways, I'm doing. I'm seeing a mindhealer, who suggested I sequester myself in the beginning, which is why I wouldn't let you come visit, despite wanting to see you desperately. I love you. I miss you. I want to see you and hold you and tell you just how much you really do mean to me. And those things alone make this the hardest letter I will ever write.

Reveka sighs, a lump forming in her throat, even now, before she's even written the truth of the matter, because this hurts, deep down into the darkest, most hidden depths of her soul, this hurts….

I do want to see you. So please, the next time you get a chance to come visit, please do, the mindhealers here seem to think I'm ready for such a thing now, and I think I am too…
I must be honest, and say that I do fear that we may be strangers when next we meet,because it does indeed feel like another lifetime ago. And there are so many things I regret my love… so many things. Never you though, I could never regret having known you, or having been with you. That lifetime that feels so very far away was the happiest I've ever been. You will forever be branded into my heart Daenerys, never doubt that I will love you always. And this is the part that makes this letter so hard, the part where I have to say…

The stylus lifts from the hide so Reveka can avoid ink blotches on the surface. She has to swallow hard and breathe, desperately trying to hold on to the damaged pieces of her rapidly re-breaking heart. The world spins, tunnel vision near blinding her as she tries to push through one of the panic attacks she's been experiencing since the birth of her son, something she's not told anyone about, not even the mindhealers, they already think her damaged as is. Once she can breath again, she cleans the stylus and begins again…

I have to say that while I love you with every fiber of my being, that… that I cannot in good conscious keep you waiting on me, waiting in hopes that one day I will come home to you. I'm never coming back to Igen… never. I cannot go back and be a pariah amongst my own people, cannot go back to a son I can't raise myself… and I'd never be able to take him from Igraine, she loves him as any mother would love a son and knowing that love myself, because I love Raeverys too, I could never take him from his doting fosters.
And I cannot expect you to uproot yourself, when I will not know when I am ready to hold down a meaningful relationship. The mindhealers even advise against me having physical and romantic relationships right now, part of my therapy. So, if you do come, it must be as my friend, and not as my lover…and if you can't, if you hate me forever after this, I completely understand…It's a big ask, asking you to be here and not be with me…to keep yourself at a distance. I couldn't do that to you, so please don't feel obligated to try if you can't. Just please try to remember that I love you. I'll always love you.
My heart breaks for the both of us as I pen this letter to you, because I… had dreamed something better for us, something happier. But I cannot justify keeping you waiting for a woman who may never heal, my never be able to put the pieces back together again. I am not being fair to you by holding on to maybes and I hopes.
Sometimes I feel like the whole world is set against us, like fate is determined to pick at us until nothing is left…and maybe it is. As I am now, I cannot sustain a relationship, I can barely handle leaving my rooms during the day, it's slowly getting easier but I panic most days still.
I'm panicking even now…but I can't keep you waiting. Can't keep you close when I can barely trust or love myself.
I regret turning you down when you asked me to marry you, oh how I wish I'd said yes. Wish I'd been selfish and asked you to stay. But I didn't…and now my heart aches because I fear the door for us is closed forever… that we've missed our time for happiness and I am the one who missed the cues.
With All my love and breaking heart,
~ Reveka

Reveka sets down the stylus and looks at the letter, half tempted to toss it into the fire and forget she ever wrote it…But then her mindhealer's advice runs the cord of her thoughts. How can you love and trust someone else if you don't love or trust yourself? It's simple… well not simple, but she can't, is the answer. She can't live anyone else until she loves and understands herself better.

She can't help the feeling of doom that spreads over her as she seals the letter closed, her tears falling in ink and hide and blurring some of it.

Daenerys was and is the love of her life, she will never forget him, never stop loving him, and she will never stop regretting turning him down when he offered to leave candidacy for her….but what's done is done and at this point she doesn't know if they'll ever be able to pick up the shattered pieces of what was once the happiest time of her life.

And she won't blame him one damn bit for hating her for this… perhaps that's what the feeling of doom is, knowing that she'll be breaking his heart yet again… and not being able to do a damn thing about it…

Drained, Reveka looks at the rest of the hides. She must write Willimina and Igraine and….pen a note for her son to read when he's of an age to understand things…but she doesn't know if she can right now… So, she packs her things, sends two of the most heart wrenching, soul baring, difficult letters she's ever had to write off to the people they need to go to, and she escapes to her rooms, fighting near panic the entire time and dreading the hours to come…

Hours which are spent picking up the battered pieces of her heart and wondering just how the shells she is expected to live through heartache like this…..how she’s expected to handle breaking the man she loves because she went insane, because she can’t handle how things turned out, because nothing will never be the same again.